2006 Laureates

Augustin Hadelich, Germany - Gold Medalist

Consistently cited in the press for his "gorgeous tone" (New York Times), "poetic communication" (Washington Post) and "fast-fingered brilliance" (The New Yorker), Augustin Hadelich has confirmed his place in the top echelon of young violinists. Following stellar debuts with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, and his subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, he made equally acclaimed debuts with the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic/Manchester, and the SWR Orchestra in Stuttgart. He also appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the New York Philharmonic at Vail, Britt Festival Orchestra, Chautauqua Festival Orchestra, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and La Jolla’s SummerFest.

Among Augustin’s recent performing highlights are debuts with the Detroit Symphony, Oregon Symphony and The Philadelphia Orchestra, his subscription debut with the Boston Symphony, as well as a recital at New York’s Frick Collection, and a tour of China with the San Diego Symphony. Debuts abroad include the Bournemouth Symphony, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto/Portugal, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Re-invitations include the symphonies of Atlanta, Cincinnati (including a week-long residency), North Carolina, and Vancouver, to name a few. At Kennedy Center Augustin (with guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas and pianist Joyce Yang) premiered an originally-conceived multimedia recital, Tango Song and Dance, based on and named after André Previn’s work for violin and piano.

Also an enthusiastic recitalist, Augustin’s numerous appearances include Carnegie Hall, The Frick Collection (New York), Kennedy Center, the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Kioi Hall (Tokyo), the Louvre, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and the Vancouver Recital Society. As chamber musician, he has been a participant at the La Jolla, Marlboro, Ravinia, and Seattle festivals, and has collaborated with Midori at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater.

Augustin’s first major orchestral CD features the violin concertos of Jean Sibelius and Thomas Adès with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu on the AVIE label. This will be only the second recording to date of the Adès concerto “Concentric Paths.” Augustin has recorded three previous CDs for AVIE: “Flying Solo,” a CD of masterworks for solo violin; “Echoes of Paris,” featuring French and Russian repertoire influenced by Parisian culture in the early 20th century; and “Histoire du Tango,” a program of violin-guitar works in collaboration with Pablo Sáinz Villegas. For Naxos, he has recorded Haydn’s complete violin concerti with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra and Telemann’s Fantasies for solo violin.

Born in Italy in 1984, the son of German parents, Augustin Hadelich holds an artist diploma from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Smirnoff. Augustin is the recipient of Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award (2012), an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2009) and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship in the UK (2011). He plays on the 1723 “Ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivari violin, on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the generous efforts of the Stradivari Society.

Hailed for her “brilliant… polished, expressive and intense” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) and “absolutely stunning” (Chicago Tribune) playing, Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma is respected by critics, peers and audiences as one of classical music’s most striking and captivating musical personalities.
With an extensive repertoire of over 60 Violin Concertos, Simone’s recent seasons have seen her perform with many of the world’s leading orchestras.

Highlights for the 17/18 and 18/19 season include debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, MDR Leipzig, Basque National Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, and returns to the Warsaw Philharmonic, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Netherlands Philharmonic at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, RTE National Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, Oregon Symphony and Cincinnati Symphony. In addition she will be returning to the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra.

Past seasons also marked several premières of new works by Simone, among which the world première of a violin concerto by Matijs de Roo during the ZaterdagMatinee series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and a successful performance of the French première of Michel van der Aa’s Violin Concerto with the Orchestre National de Lyon.

Stand-out recent festival appearances include her return to the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Festival in 2015, debuts during the Enescu Festival with Les Siècles under François-Xavier Roth, Bravo! Vail Festival with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden, and the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego.

A dedicated chamber musician, recent recital appearances include Simone’s highly anticipated debuts in London’s Wigmore Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall in March 2017 with pianist Robert Kulek.

In 2017 Simone’s most recent recording featuring Shostakovich’s first violin concerto and Gubaidulina’s ‘In Tempus praesens’ with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under James Gaffigan and Reinbert de Leeuw was released on Challenge Classics and received high accolades from the press, as did her previous Mendelssohn, Janáček and Schumann CD with pianist Robert Kulek.

In addition to her many (inter)national prizes and distinctions, Simone was awarded the national Dutch VSCD Classical Music Prize in the category ‘New Generation Musicians’ in 2010, awarded by the Association of Dutch Theatres and Concert Halls to artists that have made remarkable and valuable contributions to the Dutch classical music scene.

Simone plays the “Mlynarski” Stradivarius (1718), on generous loan to her by an anonymous benefactor.

Celeste Golden Boyer joined the Saint Louis Symphony as Second Associate Concertmaster at the start of the 2011-2012 season. Celeste began her musical studies at three years of age. When she was nine years old, she became a student of Arkady Fomin, violinist in the Dallas Symphony, and at fifteen, Celeste was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Jaime Laredo and Ida Kavafian. She completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Curtis in 2005, and in 2007, she received a Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with David Cerone and Paul Kantor.

Celeste is a laureate of several national and international competitions. Most notably, she was the Bronze Medalist at the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis in 2006. Celeste has appeared as soloist with numerous symphony orchestras around the world, including the St. Louis Symphony, the Latvian Chamber Orchestra in Riga, Latvia, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. As a chamber musician, she has appeared in series and festivals such as the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, the Festival de San Miguel de Allende, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, the Innsbrook Institute Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Marlboro Music Festival. Celeste won a three-year fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2004, and was subsequently awarded the Dorothy DeLay Memorial Fellowship by the festival, an award given to only one violin student each summer.

Celeste was the concertmaster of the New York String Orchestra Seminar in 2005 with concerts at Carnegie Hall. She also performed as concertmaster for the Orchestra of St. Luke's in the New York City premiere of John Adams' opera, "A Flowering Tree" at Lincoln Center in 2009. Celeste was a member of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra from 2010-2011, and currently performs frequently with the IRIS Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee.

Violinist/violist Yura Lee is the winner of the only first prize awarded across the four categories in the 2013 ARD Music Competition in Munich, Germany. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Yura is enjoying a career that spans almost two decades, and takes her all over the world. Her musical integrity and her compelling artistry have been praised by some of the most respected artists of today.

As a soloist, she has appeared with many major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NDR Symphonieorchester, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, and many others. Yura has performed with conductors Christophe Eschenbach, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin, Myung-Whun Chung, Mikhail Pletnev, among many others.

Yura was nominated and represented by Carnegie Hall for its ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) series. For this series, Yura gave recitals at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall and at nine celebrated concert halls in Europe: Wigmore Hall in London, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Stockholm Konserthus, the Athens Concert Hall and the Cologne Philharmonie.

At age 12, Yura became the youngest artist ever to receive the Debut Artist of the Year prize at the "Performance Today" awards given by National Public Radio. Yura received numerous international prizes, including the first prize and the audience prize at the 2006 Leopold Mozart Competition (Germany), the first prize at the 2010 UNISA International Competition (South Africa), and top prizes in the Indianapolis (USA), Hannover (Germany), Kreisler (Austria) and Paganini (Italy) Competitions.

As a chamber musician, Yura regularly takes part in the Marlboro Festival, Salzburg Festival, Verbier Festival, Caramoor Festival, Ravinia Festival, Kronberg Festival, Aspen Music Festival, among others. Yura has collaborated with many artists including Gidon Kremer, Andras Schiff, Leonidas Kavakos, Mitsuko Uchida, Miklós Perényi, Yuri Bashmet, Menahem Pressler, and Frans Helmerson. Yura is currently a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, as both violinist and violist.

Yura was awarded two Artist Diplomas, by Indiana University in Bloomington and New England Conservatory in Boston. Her main teachers included Namyun Kim, Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Thomas Riebl, Ana Chumachenko, and Nobuko Imai. Yura teaches at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, in Cambridge (near Boston). Yura divides her time between the United States (Boston/New York City) and Germany (Berlin).

Ye-Eun Choi is rapidly establishing a reputation as one of the most promising violin talents to emerge from Europe, Asia, and the USA. Since making her concert debut at the age of 10 in Seoul, she has performed internationally with orchestras such as the English Chamber Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Munich Rundfunk Orchestra, Munich Symphony Orchestra, Hofer Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Ontario Philharmonic of Canada, Symphony Orchestra of RTV Slovenia, Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra of Sweden, NHK Symphony Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, China NCPA Concert Hall Orchestra, Finland Kuhmo Chamber Orchestra, Montreal I Musici Chamber Orchestra, the leading Korean orchestras and chamber ensembles, and at the Frankfurt Alter Oper and the Frauenkirche in Dresden.

Since playing her New York Philharmonic debut concert under Alan Gilbert in October 2009, she has performed recitals and concerts with Christoph Eschenbach and Schleswig-Holstein Orchestra, the State Symphony Orchestra of New Russia under Yuri Bashmet, the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Sir André Previn, the Stuttgart Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck, Berlin Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra and Hamburg Philharmoniker under Rafael Fruebeck de Burgos, Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow under Vladimir Fedoseyev, Tchechischen Philharmonic under Manfred Honeck, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Royale Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, the NDR Radio Philharmonic, and the Bach Double with Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Trondheim Soloists.

Devoted to chamber music, Ye-Eun performs at festivals around the world including Dresdener Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Rheingau Musikfestival in Germany, Bulgos Festival in Spain, and Verbier Festival in Switzerland. She’s regularly invited to the “La Folle journée” in Japan and France, where she has performed with the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra and Dmitri Liss, the Prazak Quartet and Plamena Mangova as well as been invited by Gidon Kremer to the Lockenhaus and Kronberg festivals, where she performed with Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Lynn Harell and Khatia Buniatishvili. In 2011, Ye-Eun gave a very successful concert tour with Anne Sophie Mutter of chamber music in Hannover, Essen, Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Friedrichshafen (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Lucerne, Wehr, Verbier (Switzerland). She also performed a virtuosi concert tour with Anne-Sophie Mutter in Taipei, China, and South Korea in 2013.

Ye-Eun Choi was born in 1988, in Seoul, South Korea and studied with Ana Chumachenco at the Musik hochschule in Munich. Her exceptional talent and musical maturity were quickly recognized, both as a recipient of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation scholarship and as one of the ‘Emerging Artists of the Year’ by the American Symphony Orchestra League. In 2013, Ye-Eun Choi received the European Culture Award for New Artists and gave a performance with MDR Symphony Orchestra under Kristjan Jaervi at this award ceremony.

Recently, Ye-Eun’s debut album featuring sonatas by Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Prokofiev was released by Deutsche Grammophon.

Ye-Eun plays a violin by Pietro Giacomo Rogeri (1710), generously lent to her by the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.

Acclaimed for her passionate, powerful performances, beautiful sound, and compelling command of her instrument, violinist Bella Hristova is a young musician with a growing international career as a soloist and recording artist. Her talent has been recently recognized with a prestigious 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant, given to outstanding instrumentalists and based on excellence alone. The Strad has praised, “Every sound she draws is superb”, and the Washington Post’s The Classical Beat has stated she is “a player of impressive power and control”.

In addition to summer engagements at music festivals including Mainly Mozart, Chesapeake Chamber, Cactus Pear, Summer Stars Chamber, Brevard, and Skaneateles, Hristova’s performances feature a mix of solo, recital, and chamber music performances, including concertos by Korngold, Vivaldi, Prokofiev, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Barber, Beethoven and Bruch. Engagements of note include Bella leading/performing Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a national tour with the Musicians from Marlboro, a solo violin recital at Vermont’s Brattleboro Music Center, and a Christmas eve performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Op. 64 at Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra. She has performed world premieres of two compositions written specifically for her: David Ludwig’s concerto with the Mobile Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Anthony Richie’s violin concerto with New Zealand’s Southern Sinfonia. Her North American appearances also include orchestral engagements with the symphony orchestras of Amarillo, Bakersfield, Des Moines, Edmonton (Canada), Meridian, Southwest Michigan, Westmoreland, and the InterSchool Orchestra of New York, as well as recitals with the Tuesday Musical Club, Music for Youth, Buffalo Chamber Music Society, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Arts Council of Moore County. Abroad, Hristova also appears with New Zealand’s Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.

Recent highlights include the 2013 release of her recording Bella Unaccompanied (A.W. Tonegold Records), a CD of works for solo violin featuring John Corigliano’s The Red Violin Caprices, Kevin Puts’s Arches, Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Etudes, Nathan Milstsein’s Paganiniana Variations, and J. S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D, BWV 1004. Appearances included performances with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, at the Young Concert Artists Gala Concert at Alice Tully Hall, with the Mississippi Symphony, City of London Sinfonia, Orquesta Sinfonica de Venezuela, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Korea’s Cheongju Symphony Orchestra, and at the Cerritos Center for the Arts, the Free For All at Town Hall, the Shanghai International Music Festival, and at Seoul National University.

A sought after chamber musician, Mr. Hristova was selected as a member of CMS Two and has frequently performed chamber music at Lincoln Center, as well as at The Grand Teton Festival, Music@Menlo, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, Music from Angel Fire, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Marlboro Music Festival. She has appeared multiple times on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion on National Public Radio.

In addition to the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Bella Hristova is the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including First Prize in the 2009 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, First Prize of the 2007 Michael Hill International Violin Competition in New Zealand, and Laureate of the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. She made her debut in the Young Concert Artists Series during the 2009-10 season at Merkin Concert Hall in New York, sponsored by the Rhoda Walker Teagle Prize, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. Hristova is the first recipient of YCA’s Helen Armstrong Violin Fellowship, and has been honored with the Miriam Brody Aronson Award, the Ruth Laredo Memorial Award, the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists. Hristova currently holds the John French Violin Chair of YCA.

As a result of winning the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Hristova made a critically acclaimed concert tour of New Zealand, and a similarly acclaimed CD of solo violin works by the Belgian virtuoso Charles de Bériot (Naxos). Gramophone praised her first recording, “The brilliant passages come easily to her, … with an elegance that perfectly suits the music. … she’s an admirable advocate for Bériot.” And Music Web International stated, “…this disc is an absolute winner… …The musical diversity across the thirty eight minutes of these pieces [12 Scènes ou Caprices pour le violon Op. 109] is a delight. None of which would count for much if they were not played with the extraordinary virtuosity and musical maturity of Bella Hristova. … Hristova combines jaw-dropping technical prowess with real style.”

Born in Pleven, Bulgaria in 1985, Hristova began violin studies at the age of six. At twelve, she participated in masterclasses with Ruggiero Ricci at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 2003, she entered the Curtis Institute of Music, where she worked with Ida Kavafian and studied chamber music with Steven Tenenbom. She received her Artist Diploma with Jaime Laredo at Indiana University in 2010. Hristova plays a 1655 Nicolò Amati violin, once owned by the violinist Louis Krasner.